


and suddenly we were strangers

by space_squirrel



Series: Warrior Daughter [8]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Horizon (Mass Effect)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-13 23:18:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11770521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/space_squirrel/pseuds/space_squirrel
Summary: stran·gers (ˈstrānjərs)noun, plural1. a person whom one does not know or with whom one is not familiar.2. Sophie Shepard and Kaidan AlenkoOr the story of how Horizon happened, as told from two very different points of view.





	and suddenly we were strangers

Shepard watches silently as the collector ship takes off, over half the colony gone with it. A lone mechanic runs behind the ship, waving his arms and shouting, as if his sheer will might be enough to bring it down.

She can’t help but react defensively when the man turns around and accuses her of not doing enough to save them, screams at her to do something, _anything_.

“I did what I could,” she spits out, the fury she’s feeling at herself, at this impossible situation seeping into her words. “And what did you do? You just hid in your damned bunker.”

It’s never enough these days, it seems, and she briefly wonders if partnering with Cerberus on this is really worth it: worth isolating herself from the Alliance, worth ruining her reputation even farther, if she was always going to be a step behind the Collectors.

“Nobody could have done more than you, Shepard,” Miranda agrees, ( _thanks, Captain Obvious),_ and she can’t help but roll her eyes.

The mechanic is spewing vitriol about the Alliance now, about “you war hero types” who get left behind while the good die, and just when she’s contemplating buttstroking him or throwing him in a stasis just to get him to _shut up_ already, she hears a very familiar voice saying her name.

Time slows to a crawl as Kaidan steps out from behind a crate, his voice as warm as the last day she heard it, over two long years ago, and for a split second, she’s frozen in place, heart pounding as he approaches. “Captain of the Normandy. The first human spectre. Saviour of the Citadel. You’re in the presence of a legend, Delan. And a ghost,” he finishes, turning to face her directly.

Delan storms off, and Shepard half registers him throwing one last insult towards her, nevermind the fact that she just saved his ass from being taken, too.

Suddenly Kaidan is wrapping his arms around her, pulling her close, one hand finding it’s way to the small of her back while the other is rubbing small circles at the nape of her neck, and she feels her eyes prick with tears at the familiar gesture. She melts into him, breathing in the scent of sandlewood and eezo that is so uniquely Kaidan, and for the first time since waking up in that cold, Cerberus facility she feels like herself.

“I thought you were dead, Shepard,” he whispers to her, pressing a kiss to her temple and drawing in a deep, shuddering breath. “We all did.”

There’s so many things she wants to say, right now, and so many more she _can’t_ say, not with Miranda standing behind her, not with Cerberus so close.

She knows she needs to say something, though, and so when she opens her mouth to speak, she says the first safe thing that springs to mind. “It’s... it’s good to see you, Kaidan. It’s been too long. How’ve you been?”

Instantly, she cringes at the casual and unassuming words, and Kaidan stiffens in her arms, pulling away as his eyes darken.

“Is that all you have to say, Sophie?”

 _No,_ she wants to yell at him, _I have a shit ton more to say,_ but she is ever cognizant of the Cerberus woman at her six, and she keeps her mouth shut. She’s already said too much in front of someone she doesn’t trust.

“I thought we had something, something real,” Kaidan says, and she flinches at the raw hurt and anger flashing at her behind those once-warm amber eyes as he studies her. “Maybe it wasn’t real to you, but it was to me, and thinking you were dead tore me apart. How could you put me through that?”

“Kaidan, I _was_ clinically dead,” she says, with as much authority as she can muster, and he scoffs, cutting her off.

“I _loved_ you, Soph” he breathes, and her heart clenches painfully at the first time she’s hearing those words.

Loved. Past tense.

She has never totally been certain of how she felt about Kaidan, to be honest - not when they slept together before Ilos; not all those nights after, either, when he crept into her quarters in the quiet hours of the night cycle; not when she burned over Alchera, dizzy and suffocating; and not when she woke up two years later on a cold metal table, confused and alone, Miranda’s voice in her ear.

But the weight of what he’s saying hits her like a brick, and in this moment she knows, _knows_ , that what she felt for him - still feels, if she allows herself to be absolutely honest - is love.

She has to suck in a breath and clench her fists, nails digging into her palms to ground herself, to keep her emotions in check. _So much for keeping things on the DL,_ she thinks, but regardless the last thing she needs right now is her ground team seeing the great Commander Shepard having a meltdown over someone who had probably moved on years ago.

Instead, she focuses on the sharp pain in her hands ( _she’s digging her nails in so hard, now, she’s positive she’s drawing blood_ ), trying desperately to focus on this physical pain, the kind she can deal with, is _good_ at dealing with, instead of this strange emotional pain she’s feeling, the kind she hasn't felt since the day her father died.

This is exactly why she had built up her walls, never allowed someone to get this close. Sophie has never been good at dealing with her emotions, instead preferring to find a pleasant numbness at the bottom of a bottle, or throw herself hard and fast into combat.

Kaidan is staring at her now, almost expectantly, like he’s waiting for her to say something, and she realizes she had tuned out his words, missed whatever it was he said.

“Look,” she says, voice cold ( _even by her standards_ ). “You’re still with the Alliance, and you’ve all clearly turned a blind eye to this problem. But human colonies are disappearing,” she waves her hand at the sky for emphasis, “and I’m _trying_ to save them.”

“Oh, is that what this is?” he asks, looking from her, to Miranda, to Jack, and back at Miranda again, eyes narrowing. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’ve got Cerberus goons watching your six.”

“Watch who the _fuck_ you’re calling Cerberus, buddy,” Jack snarls, and Miranda puts a hand out, motioning for her to step back.

If looks could kill, Miranda would be fried twice over by now, but Jack shuts up either way, and Shepard is briefly thankful that she had the foresight to both designate Miranda as her official second for this mission, and tell Jack she better fucking respect it.

“Are you going to deny it, Shepard?” Kaidan asks, a rough edge to his voice. “Because Alliance intel thought that Cerberus might be behind the missing human colonies. They got a tip this colony might be the next one to get hit. Anderson stonewalled me, but there were rumors that you weren't dead. That you were working for the enemy,” he pauses, giving Miranda one last hard look. “And so far, it looks like those reports were right.”

“Reports?” Miranda questions, raising an eyebrow. “So much for security.”

“Kaidan, our colonies are disappearing,” Shepard says hotly, feeling a familiar anger build inside her, biotics tingling alongside it. “And the Alliance, your precious _fucking_ Alliance turned their backs on them, and on me. Cerberus is the only group willing to do something about it. So yeah, I’m working _with_ them, because the Alliance won’t work _with_ me.”

“I wanted to believe the rumours that you were alive,” he says softly, pain flashing visibly across his face again for a split second, before it morphs into an expression of anger she’s rarely, if ever, seen him wear. “But I never, _never_ expected this. You turned your back on everything we believed in. You’re the one who betrayed the Alliance. You betrayed me.”

Her mouth is instantly dry, hands clammy, and her heart leaps into her throat as she struggles to find the right words, to say something, anything, to soften the way he’s staring at her right now.

“I thought you knew me, Kaidan,” she says softly. “But this isn’t about me working with Cerberus. There’s something much bigger at stake.”

“I want to believe you, Shepard,” he says, but she knows it’s only a half truth. He might not know her as well as she once thought he did, but she sure as hell knows _him_ , and his tone of voice says he doesn’t believe her, not one bit. “But I don't trust Cerberus. They’re using the threat of a Reaper to manipulate you. What if they're behind it? What if they're working with the Collectors?”

Shepard can’t say that that thought hadn’t crossed her mind before - but hell, if that was the case, the best place to put an end to things was on the SR-2. What was that old earth saying? _Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer._

“Typical Alliance attitude,” Miranda sneers, folding her arms across her chest. “You’re so focused on Cerberus that you’re blind to the real threat.”

Shepard lets her eyes flutter closed for a second, grounding herself before she speaks ( _because God, does she hate what she's about to say_ ); and she swears she can actually _feel_ Kaidan put his back up even farther as the words tumble out. “I hate to say it, but Miranda’s right. You’re letting how you feel about their history get in the way of the facts.”

“Or maybe you feel like you owe Cerberus because they saved you,” he replies, narrowing his eyes at Miranda before refocusing his attention on her. “Maybe you're the one who's not thinking straight.”

She can’t help but roll her eyes at that one. Typical, stubborn Kaidan. _At least some things never change_ , she thinks.

“Well, I can see you won’t listen to reason.”

“You show up after two years and tell me you're working for _Cerberus,”_ he says, shaking his head. “How does reason figure into any of this?”

She can’t answer him, instead setting her jaw in a hard line, tilting her chin and standing her ground. She knows his point is valid, knows that if she was standing in his shoes she’d be questioning the shit out of these borderline insane life choices, but she also knows that what she’s doing, though controversial as fuck, is _right_.

“You've changed,” Kaidan says, running a hand through his hair and sighing heavily. “Or maybe I never really knew you in the first place. But I still know where my loyalties lie, even if you don’t. I'm an Alliance soldier, and always will be, Shepard. That means something to me. I thought it used to mean something to you, too.”

He turns to go, and the words are tumbling out of her mouth before she can stop them.

“You can join us Kaidan,” she says, cringing inwardly at the desperation in her voice. “I could use someone like you in my crew. It'll be just like old times.”

... _except you'd be working for a terrorist organization that literally tortured people,_ she thinks, _one that has questionable morals at best, and carries an abhorrence for aliens the likes of which I’ve never seen before, but hey, once you get past that..._

Sophie has never been one to regret things, especially not things she _says_ , but for the first time in her life her ears are burning and she wishes she could take back her words or physically, actually stick her foot in her mouth. Kaidan’s back instantly straightens, and his eyes darken. She can feel his biotics washing over them both like a wave, tingling over her skin as he struggles to get them under control. No, that was not the right thing to say, nor the right moment to _say_ it, not by a longshot.

The colony is silent. Too silent, really, and the seconds are ticking by painfully slowly as she and Kaidan stare at each other.

“I’ll never work for Cerberus,” he says finally, jaw tight, voice flat, eyes sad. He gives her one last, long look before turning on his heel and walking away from her.

“ _With_ ,” she whispers to his retreating form, as if it made a lick of a difference.

The silence is deafening, now: nothing but the hum of the defense towers ( _too little, too late)_ filling the air. The collectors had swooped in and taken almost everyone, their screams and cries as they ran, frantically peeling out into alleyways and decrypt buildings as gunfire echoed down the road playing over and over in her brain.

“Most people run from gunfire,” a civilian boyfriend had once told her, “but you're always going to be the person who runs into it, aren't you?”

That had been the blow delivered right before he ended things, citing the need for commitment she wouldn't, couldn't give. He wanted a future, one with a white picket fence and kids. They had both known she didn't have one ahead of her.

And she still didn't have one. Hell, if she was being honest with herself: this war was only ending one way, and it wasn't the happy ending Kaidan wanted… or deserved. Shepard is prepared to die for this war, if that's what it takes - and she knows that means she will die for this. 

He was better off without her, she decides, and besides, she has never needed anyone else before, and certainly didn’t _need_ anyone now, Kaidan-fucking-Alenko included.

Still, she turns away, unable to bear watching him leave as she radios the Normandy for pickup.

“Get us the hell out of here, Joker. I've had enough of this fucking planet.”

She can feel Miranda’s sympathetic eyes on her back as she stalks towards the rendezvous point, but at least she is smart enough not to comment, trailing behind Shepard in silence.


End file.
